OPINION:
George Washington University students want to banish the the campus’s longstanding mascot, the “Colonials,” and replace it with a hippopotamus.
They say the current mascot is offensive to out-of-towners who may have been touched at one time by the “effects of colonialism.”
So naturally, the hippo is the next best bet.
Here’s the story, as noted by the college Student Association’s GW Voice and Breitbart: Rachel Yakobashvili, a sophomore with an apparent passion for those who’ve been negatively impacted by colonialism, called for the university to sub out the “Colonials” mascot for “Hippos,” or maybe “Riverhorses” or “Revolutionaries.” Hundreds of students jumped on the petition bandwagon.
“It’s hard to have school pride when the thing that you have to be prideful for is so offensive,” Yakobashvili said.
What’s a bit odd is the suggested hippo replacement.
“Ironically,” Breitbart writes, “if the hippo replaces Colonials, the new mascot would represent the African mammal considered the most dangerous on the continent, where it kills an estimated 3,000 humans a year.”
Yes, ironic indeed.
What’s also a question mark is if colonialism is bad, at least in the snowflake’s mind, wouldn’t George Washington be worse?
Washington, after all, lived at a time when slavery was an accepted part of the society. That brings up bad memories, particularly for blacks who may have family members who suffered at the hands of slave owners. And those bad memories, in Yakobashvili logic, are enough to justify complete overhauls of tradition and costly changes to campus icons and symbols and names.
Watch out. The “Colonials” mascot, very likely, is just a drop in the bucket of what snowflakey, politically correct students will soon target for change.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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